interstellar travel
A Novel Propulsion System Would Hurl Hypervelocity Pellets at a Spacecraft to Speed it up
A new proposal for a pellet-beam spacecraft could enable interstellar missions and a Solar Gravitational Lens in a matter of…
Lightweight Picogram-Scale Probes Could be the Best way to Explore Other Star Systems
Inspiration for space exploration can come from all corners. One of the most inspiring, or terrifying, sources of inspiration for…
Birds use Dynamic Soaring to Pick Up Velocity. We Could Use a Similar Trick to Go Interstellar
A new proposal for an interstellar mission shows how a solar sail could use the same technique birds do to…
New Calculations Show That an Interstellar Bussard Ramjet Drive Would Need a Magnetic Field Stretching 150 Million Kilometres
A new analysis of the fabled Bussard Ramjet shows that the spacecraft would need an impossibly big magnetic field to…
Avoiding the Great Filter. How Long Until We’re Living Across the Solar System?
According to a new study, humanity could become an interplanetary species in this century, interstellar by the 23rd, and intragalactic…
Sending a Spacecraft to Another Star Will Require a Million Lasers Working Together
New research from the Australia National University shows that millions of lasers are the way to propel Breakthrough Starshot on…
Gravitational Lenses Could Allow a Galaxy-Wide Internet
We could gravitationally lens radio signals to communicate with space probes at other stars. Maybe even communicate across the galaxy.
Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XIV: What is the Aurora Hypothesis?
Is it possible that we haven't heard from aliens because colonizing exoplanets is hazardous to your health? So says the…
Want the Fastest Solar Sail? Drop it Into the Sun First
A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy shows how a "Sun Diver," a light sail that dives…
What’s the Best Way to Communicate With an Interstellar Probe When it’s Light-Years Away From Earth?
A new study by an international team of scientists addressed a major challenge with interstellar missions: how to send and…